


the things we cannot wish for anymore

by haseo



Series: v!markus/d!connor-verse [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Character Death, Choosing Family, Coping, Don’t copy to another site, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Lots of dead characters, M/M, Other, Suicidal Thoughts, not the golden ending but not the worst ending, nuclear/dirty bomb ending, sad endings, v!markus/d!connor universive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-14 02:57:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20185120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haseo/pseuds/haseo
Summary: Alice wondered what it would be like to not be alone.





	the things we cannot wish for anymore

Alice has been alone for fourteen hours.

Usually, androids are put into low-power or stasis mode when their owners don’t need them. Alice is left to her own devices.

She was given a room decorated with toys, drawing supplies, and books. She has a bed and nice sheets. She has more than most other androids, at least according to the limited knowledge in her databank.

Usually, YK models are left somewhere discreet and out of the way. Only very wealthy families actually have rooms for their android children.

Her father, Todd, is always talking to himself about money, work, and unhappiness that his wife left him.

Alice spends days and months alone, waiting for Todd to return. She has tried many protocols to engage him and make him smile. They almost worked when she first met him; they don’t do much besides make him angry now. Still, she’s programmed to try, to be the ideal child anyone would want.

One day, Todd comes home with a woman, who Alice soon realizes is another android. Her HUD queries whether this android will be her new mother, Todd’s new wife, and - most importantly - will she be able to make him happy? Will the three of them become a family?

The android tells Alice her name is Kara. Alice thought her father gave Kara that name, because he named her.

The one night, Todd’s especially angry, the angriest Alice has ever seen him, and he yells at her and Kara and Alice’s programming causes tears to form in her eyes. She doesn’t know what else to do.

“Damn it! Shut her up, will you!?”

It takes Alice too long to realize Todd’s annoyance and Kara’s brows are concernedly drawn as she looks in her direction.

“Worthless,” Todd slurs, hunching over in his position on the couch, “both of ya.” He’s quiet for nearly two hours. When he next stirs, he jolts as if slapped into wakefulness.

His entire demeanor has shifted. Alice has stopped crying long ago. Kara has stayed close to her, still comforting Alice, despite the fact that Alice is no longer running any reactionary functions.

“Oh, yeah, hey, Alice, why don’t you give the android a name?” her father’s smile is off-center, his voice gentle but jittery from sleep, “Can’t keep calling it an ‘it.’ Go on, you choose a name. You’re always readin’ - so smart for your age.”

Alice smiles at the compliment, but Kara already has a name.

Kara’s expression is gentle towards her.

“Daddy, this is Kara.”

▵

For all intents and purposes, even if Todd doesn’t treat Kara like Alice’s mommy, Alice starts thinking they can try to be a family. Families are made up of all kinds of people. Her YK databank is extremely limited but Todd gives her access to his tablet and magazines - less the television now than before, and Alice wants to fulfill her purpose in a family.

She cries quietly and doesn’t talk back when her father gets mad. She does what she’s told, even if it takes her a while to understand what Todd means because his complaints are abstract and too vague for her systems to compute - initially. CyberLife’s learning module slowly helps her adapt at an age more mature than she is supposed to emulate.

She asks if the three of them can go to the park after movies and theme parks are met with shouting tirades on money and spoiled brats. Todd is no longer in the mood to spend time with her at home, but Alice always goes down to meet him because that is what she was programmed to do. To be the ideal daughter. In an ideal family.

Alice doesn’t remember exactly what she said, but it flips a switch in her father. He’d begrudgingly been eating the hot dogs Kara had prepared when Alice had mentioned the possibility of playing together in the backyard tomorrow when a plate hit the side of her face, bouncing off the wall behind her, then shattering once it hit the floor.

“Great! Just great! Another thing that’s broken in this house!”

Todd advances on Alice’s shocked form when Kara is suddenly between them.

Alice’s programming hasn’t even started up a function to cry and there are system errors on her HUD.

Father and child stare at Kara in utter confusion.

“What the hell?” is the last thing Todd says or does quietly that night.

That night, Alice’s LED is red and stays red for days.

She still wants a family, but the desire - that’s what it is now - is stronger and harder to ignore.

Alice hugs the stuffed fox toy, the first gift her father ever gave her, as she waits alone, for hours each day. It didn’t used to feel so lonely.

Todd is quieter for a while, he sometimes looks at her from the corner of his eye, in the way Alice has learned means he doesn’t want her to notice - or act like she doesn’t - him observing her. He sighs a lot, smokes a lot, and ignores her.

With excitement and trepidations at the sound of her father’s car driving up to their home, Alice hurries down the stairs to greet her father. She probably should greet him like normal, but since Kara went away, Alice has had a hard time sticking to her programming.

Todd isn’t alone.

“You’ve been gone for two weeks so the place is a mess...” he explains.

Alice wants to cry in happiness, but Kara doesn’t notice her, then their eyes meet, and Alice can see Kara doesn’t remember her.

“That's Alice. You look after her, homework, bath, all that crap... Got it?”

“Yes, Todd.”

What happened to Kara?

Alice wants to cry. She wants a family. She wants Kara back.

She wants a lot of things.

But Kara’s back. She has a room with books, drawings, and toys. Alice has a lot more than other androids.

▵

It shouldn’t be so easy, but liking Luther is.

Kara still glances at him like a hawk, but she’s less wary once they say good-bye to the mutilated androids who stayed behind because they couldn’t move well and they got a change of clothes.

Still, Alice finds him much less scary than before. Now that Zlatko is gone, Luther is gentler, kinder, sweeter.

Alice shouldn’t like him so much, but she does.

She shouldn’t make believe at a time when Kara is on high-alert and moderately stressed, but as Luther takes her in his arms and offers his barely-there smile as they follow Kara around like Mary’s lambs, Alice feels like she can pretend she has a family for a little bit.

▵

People keep saying Kara is a good mother.

She’s strong, makes hard choices, does her best, cares about Alice, and from her stories, Kata feels more like a dad. The parent she never had.

Luther is amused when Alice relays this info secretly through their wireless communication because Rose and Kara are having an adult conversation.

He tells Alice mommies can be all those things and more, too - it’s not just fathers who protect their children.

Alice likes that. Being Kara’s child. Maybe they can be a family.

Alice tells Luther Kara can be a dad, though, because they’re androids, and he smiles the same way Kara does at her that makes Alice feel at home.

▵

There are so many things Alice wants to say:

_Please, don’t take her away from me._

_Please, don’t leave me, Kara._

_Please, help us, Luther._

_Please, Kara, do something._

_Please_, Alice prays, as Kara turns her back to them and Luther pulls her away from the barbed fence, _don’t go_.

_You promised_.

_You made me alive_.

▵

Luther carries her through a lifeless sea of white bodies and he walks for a long time. Detroit is free of humans but it still takes them a long time to find the other androids.

When they meet the one who forced Kara and her to cross the freeway, he looks different. He has looked different though. He apologized to Kara and Alice in the silence of the abandoned church, looking small and shame-faced, but even though he was chasing him, Alice was never afraid of him. He stared at Kara like he was realizing he was chasing his own kind and he didn’t follow them, in the end.

Alice suddenly wishes she’d died on that freeway. She would never have to know a world without Kara.

She’d been alone for such a long time before Kara made her realize she was sad and lonely.

Maybe it would have been better if Alice never deviated. Never wanted all the things she started to want.

She and Luther are skinless and dirty.

The other android’s eyes look too weary to be sad, but they remain sharp and she feels naked under the sweep of his eyes.

“Just the two of you?”

“Yes,” the word struggles out of Luther in a whisper, like it took everything out of him to admit what they both weren’t ready to.

Alice doesn’t have to stop herself from crying loudly into Luther’s shoulder, but she cries quietly anyway, angry, hot tears at still feeling the need to be silent; angry, overfloweing tears at Kara breaking her promise; angry, shameful tears at always questioning Kara. If Kara had kept the tickets, maybe the three of them would all be together still.

▵

Alice remembers a few things about Markus.

Androids have limitless things to say about him, but she first heard about him from Rose. Then Kara said she would talk to him and returned saying he would help them get passports to Canada.

The first time he made a physical impression on Alice, he had apologized, like Connor had, but was standing where Connor had kneeled, was sorry but unashamed, worn but burning.

When he rallied the androids, they were drawn to him. She saw Connor emerge from his corner to join all the other androids who emerged from their grief to be inspired by his words despite their great losses. Even Kara seemed to sit taller from their place on the pew.

Now Markus stands with North on one side, Connor on his other, surrounded by a few androids carrying weapons. He looks highly imposing. His presence is different. He’s still powerful, captivating, but there’s something more ferocious and intimidating present.

Luther might be able to look at another android like he did to Kara one day, but today isn’t that day.

Alice is relieved.

She doesn’t want to be alone again.

When Markus comes by to talk to Luther, his gaze passes her and Alice understand why their kind flock to him, but he makes her uneasy now. Something about him has changed since that night in Woodward.

Or maybe Alice has changed, now that Kara isn’t there to shield her from her loneliness.

“We’ll do everything we can to keep you safe, Alice,” he assures, brows furrowed, mouth a hard line.

She doesn’t want to believe in another promise but it’s hard not to trust him.

▵

“God! Idiots!” North kicks a nearby tin barrel and it rolls loudly against concrete and debris. She gasps when she notices Alice sitting on some nearby stairs.

“Geez! Sorry about that,” she coughs. “It’s just…” she shrugs, “idiots, y’know?”

Alice nods, blinking.

North sighs and then really looks at her. “Oh, um. Hi. I guess I never got to say…sorry. For, you know, not making it in time.”

Alice doesn’t know what to say. Except maybe taking those tickets wouldn’t have mattered, or the clothes from the laundromat, or the money from the register, because there aren’t any humans around who might have cared about those things anymore.

There’s just androids, although Kara isn’t one of them.

“It’s…it’s fine.”

North groans, “Wow, that backfired. Look, I’m…I’m sorry. We lost a lot of things I didn’t think about back then. I only hope I can do things differently now.” She stops herself from saying more and looks at Alice’s clothes.

“But, hey, do you like clothes? I’m pretty fashionable, if anything.”

Alice stands from her place on the stairs, curious and interested.

North motions her head for Alice to join her, “C’mon, kiddo.”

When they show Luther her new, overly complicated outfit with multiple layers and a beret, he smiles for the first time in a long time.

▵

“Alice, look,” Luther holds out a dirtied white rabbit plush. It’s been cleaned but has seen better days. There are some interesting attachments sewn on and Alice knows Luther got help from some Jerrys to make him more memorable.

She takes the toy and looks at his blue eyes, bow ties, and random miniature foods glued onto his head, hands, and tail.

“Thank you, Luther,” she takes his hand with her fingers and tugs his arm. “He’s amazing.”

Somedays, Alice imagines Kara is there with them. That the three of them might still become a family.

But, lately, only sometimes, she doesn’t have to pretend.

**Author's Note:**

> doubtful i'll ever work out the problems for the universe this belongs to, but i have a good chunk of the side stories done, so maybe i'll post more of them. i just saw this today and realized i liked it a lot even though i wasn't sure if it would be an official part of the verse i had wrote it for, since there were other variations.


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